Ready To Lose
by Oliviet
Summary: "When you coming home? It's the quiet in the night that makes my mind make noises and guessing second times. Tell me that you're mine. Say it one more time. I'm ready to lose everything but you." An AU of sorts post-ep for 8x02, XX.


_When you coming home?_

 _It's the quiet in the night_

 _That makes my mind make noises and guessing second times_

 _Tell me that you're mine_

 _Say it one more time_

 _I'm ready to lose everything but you_

* * *

She hates herself for this. Hates that she just can't make herself let it go. But that justice she thought she had achieved with arresting Bracken? It's been taken away from her. The ex-senator is dead and all this time he's had a _partner_. Of course he did. She wants to kick herself for not realizing it sooner. He accomplished way too much to do that all on his own, even with his association with Vulcan Simmons.

This new knowledge lights a fire within her, one she thought had long since been put out, and it almost makes her sick. She doesn't want to do this. Doesn't want to ruin the happiness that she's been searching for since her twenties. But more people are dead now, and whether Rita believes so or not, she feels the blood is on her. They were _her_ team, as short-lived as it was, and she should be dead right along with them. So can she really treat them with any less ferocity than she would if it were her 12th Precinct team that had been taken out? Okay, bad comparison. The AG's office was far from becoming the family her people at the 12th are. But still she can't let their murders hang in the air as they are, written off just like her mother's. Let alone when the same party is responsible.

So the need consumes her. The need to do more and find answers. She wants to rip this part of her away and put it somewhere she can never get to it. What had she told Burke all those years ago?

 _I want to be more than who I am._

She'd thought she found that place, as the new Captain of the 12th, as Castle's wife. But she's had this obsession her full adult life and it's practically ingrained in her DNA. She doesn't know how to exist without it. She doesn't know how to be more than that young girl with the dead mother. Kate thought she'd moved passed all of this, it's why she stopped wearing her mother's ring every day. But she had been wrong.

She doesn't want happiness to be such a futile thing anymore. She wants it to be tangible and not something that is chased away the moment she finds solace in it. Her life has become nothing but a series of ups and down that she firmly believes will never cease until this whole thing is put to rest at its source. She needs to find the CIA mole, the partner. She needs to end this once and for all.

And she can't take Castle with her, she won't. She's ready to lose everything, but she can't lose him. She will not be responsible for his death. So because she can't change who she is, or how much his life means to her, she runs.

* * *

He almost doesn't listen to the voicemail when he sees the unknown number flash across his screen. He knows it has to be her or at the very least _about_ her. Two months and he hasn't heard a single word, feels like he's barely slept a single night.

Is this what this was like for her last summer? The not knowing, the dread, the fear that death has already come? But she left on her own terms, that's the difference. While he... still isn't entirely sure what happened... But she left him. Left him to protect him from god knows what. And now he's just in the dark, both literally and figuratively, lying in a half empty bed. She'd told him that the bed was too big without him and that's why she had retreated back to her old apartment in his absence. He didn't get it at the time. He's always had this bed and it's never felt too big on his own before.

But it does now.

It feels ready to swallow him whole.

And it won't let him sleep. Her scent has faded from her side of the bed, and he recalls her telling him the same thing about his side when she got him back. He remembers returning to a practically empty closet, Kate having stolen most of his shirts to wrap herself in. He understands all of it now. Desperately wants nothing more than to fold her into his arms and never let her out of his sight again.

But he almost doesn't listen to the voicemail. He aches for her, but he's also furious at her. She left him and he still barely knows why. She's putting him through hell and for what? To protect him? Hasn't he proven over the last eight years that he can protect himself? That he can protect both of them? At last count, he was winning the 'I've saved your life' tally.

And yet he finally brings himself to press play on the voicemail. Listens as the breathy sound of her voice fills his ear. He doesn't even realize that his eyes have begun to fill with tears until he pulls the phone away from his ear to press play again. She's alive. _She's alive_. And she's back in the city. But had she ever left?

He listens to it a third time, picking up on the nerves and guilt in her voice. She wants to apologize. She wants to explain everything.

She wants to come home.

* * *

Castle sees her sitting on their swing set from across the street. As far as he can tell, she looks unchanged. But he can't help but wonder how many new scars mark her skin. Or how many new secrets she's harboring that she'll never share.

He approaches her slowly, fighting back the urge to pull her up out of that swing and into his arms. He opts for leaning against one of the poles of the swing set instead of sitting in the swing that sways idly next to hers in the November wind. She turns wide eyes on him, her expression filled with relief.

"I was hoping you'd show up," she says softly.

"I have to say, I saw our one year anniversary plans going a lot differently than this," Castle mutters.

"So did I. I've had the lingerie for it since August."

He doesn't know whether to laugh or yell at that. He can't even tell if that was supposed to be a joke. So he scrubs a hand over his face instead.

"Kate - where the hell have you been?"

He should hug her. He really should let her meld into him again, make up for the months lost. He wants so much from her right now. But he remains rooted in place, waiting for her explanation to ease some of the tightness from his chest.

"D.C.," Kate starts, glancing up at him before dropping her gaze to the ground. "Upstate New York, and, at one point, Boston."

He feels his jaw go slack. She's been so close this entire time and yet - wait, why Boston?

"Kate -"

"Please, Castle. I asked you here so I could explain. At least let me do that."

"Explain what?" he asks, letting his anger get the best of him. "How you almost died and the bad guy you were chasing got away, but you don't care? That you just want to come home to me? Because I've heard that speech before. And yet you still left me for that damn rabbit hole again."

She shakes her head, her gaze focused on a pile of leaves blowing around the playground in the wind.

"Bracken had a partner, a mole inside the CIA, and I've spent the last two months trying to track him down and uncover whatever LocSat is. And I think I'm close. I think I'm really close. But the last time I was this close to something like this? I was nearly thrown off of a building. And I just started wondering, why am I doing this?"

He shuffles his feet in the dried up grass, waiting for her to continue, but urging her on when she doesn't.

"And what conclusion did you come to?"

Kate wraps her hands around the chains of the swing. "Catching this guy was the whole reason I became a cop. And I thought I had him after I arrested Bracken. Thought I'd fulfilled my purpose or whatever. But knowing there's another one out there, someone else who wants me dead, I couldn't handle it. So I ran at it headfirst, because that's just who I am. But -"

She trails off, chewing on her lower lip.

"But?" he presses.

She sighs, finally drawing her gaze back over to him. "So maybe it is the same speech as four years ago. Maybe I keep making the exact same mistake. I just don't know how to stop chasing this when all I'm trying to do is protect myself and my family. I don't want anyone else dying because of me, especially not the people that I love. But I'm tired. I'm so tired, Castle." She lets go of the chains and wraps her arms around her middle. "I want to give up on fighting the dragons, and learn how to just live my life - my life with you."

Castle gives up on being stoic and sinks down into the empty swing. His knee bumps into hers and he swears he feels a shiver run through her.

"You should have trusted me to be in on this with you. I don't care if you have dragons to chase or demons to fight. I've known that about you since the beginning. What I care about is how you choose to handle them; decisions that should include me. We're a team, Kate."

She looks up at the sky like she's trying to bite back tears.

"They would have killed you. They know the easiest way to get to me is to get to you. That I would come out of whatever hiding I was in to save you and they have proof of that. I love you too much to be the reason for your death. I had to do this on my own. I had to keep you alive."

"I can take care of myself -"

"I know you think that. I know how many times you've saved my life over the past eight years, believe me I do. But this wasn't like anything we've ever faced before. I couldn't risk it."

Castle looks down at his hands, clasped in his lap. "So what now? We just go on with our lives? Pretend this never happened?"

"We move forward," she says softly, barely above a whisper. "Together."

He doesn't answer her. Can't figure out what it is he wants to say. But he knows he has to do something, so he reaches for her hand, laces their fingers together and squeezes.

"Are we going to be okay?"

Another whisper. He can hear the tears in her voice, see them glistening in her eyes. Castle finally stands and pulls her up with him, bracketing her into his chest. She clings to him, her hands fisting into his shirt and her face burrowing against his neck. His senses are overwhelmed by her: her touch, the feel of her, her scent. It's too much and not enough all at once.

"I've missed you," he whispers back as a response. "I've missed you so much it's almost too hard to be angry at you. And I appreciate your concern for my life, but you have to take into consideration my concern for yours. Partners in crime and in life, remember?"

She nods, mumbling against his skin. "I just wanted to keep you alive."

His hand rakes through her hair and she presses even closer to him.

"Just promise me one thing. If you decide to pursue this again, you will tell me and let me help. We caught Bracken together, Kate. We can do anything as long as we're together. And that includes evading skilled hitmen."

Kate nods again, her hair tickling his chin.

"Never leaving," she mumbles. "Not without you."

* * *

 _Ready To Lose_ lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson


End file.
